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Children in Afghan refugee camps feeling winter's deadly bite

Displaced Afghan children from Helmand province wait to receive winter supplies at the Charahi Qambar refugee camp last week on the outskirts of Kabul. (Shah Marai, AFP/Getty Images)

KABUL — The snow that fell on a refugee camp in Kabul last week left thick powder piled on the sagging roofs of huts and skinny tree branches, turning the squalor into a winter wonderland. The mistake of a toddler named Janan was to play in it.

By nightfall Thursday, Janan, 3, was sick. On Friday, he never woke up.

He became the first known victim to freeze to death this winter in the mud and tarpaulin warrens of Kabul's 44 refugee camps, where more than 100 children died of cold last winter.

His father, Taj Mohammad, 32, fears Janan might not be the last. "I am worried that more of my children will die," he said.

When the children died here last winter, the question was, how could this happen in the capital city, home to 2,000 aid groups, recipient of $58 billion in development aid and at least $3.5 billion in humanitarian aid over the past 10 years? The question this winter is, how could it happen again?

The answer appears to be a combination of stubbornness by the Afghan government and the refugees themselves; inadequate deliveries of aid as winter sets in; and, in some cases, desperate families who sold their winter clothes and blankets in the summer to get food.

Last winter, after news reports drew attention to the deaths, aid groups, individuals and the U.S. military rushed in with blankets and warm clothing, charcoal and firewood.

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The United Nations organized aid this year to try to get supplies where they were needed most.

In a report in November, the organization's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that distribution of fuel, cold-weather clothing, blankets and tarpaulins would begin Dec. 9, and continue through this month and next, although the agency warned that firewood supplies for February had not yet been financed by donor countries.

Despite the preparations, matters rapidly took a turn for the worse the first time that protracted subfreezing temperatures set in with a snowstorm on Thursday and Friday.

In visits Saturday to two camps that were the worst hit last January and February, Charahi Qambar and Nasaji Bagrami, residents were clearly ill-prepared.

Small boys and girls ran through the muddy ice and snow in open sandals, flip-flops and even barefoot. While here and there a child had a donated coat or sweater, they were the exception. Some adult men were better clothed, often with donated warm clothing, but few had hats, gloves or warm boots.

"I fear for the future," said Mohammad Yousef, the manager of Aschiana, one of the few refugee groups working in the Kabul camps. "This is only the start of the cold weather."

"There are 900 families here and every family has 10 to 15 children," said Najibullah, an Aschiana worker at the Charahi Qambar camp, the biggest in Kabul. Distributions of clothing mostly came after the worst of last year's winter weather. "When the NGOs came, they gave out one jacket per house."